Thursday, July 16, 2015

Ant-Man Movie Review: Comedians do make good Super-Heroes

Well,
Marvel did it again. They took a lesser known super-hero with a strange premise
and turned it into a really solid movie. Ant-Man isn’t as strong as Guardians
was last year, though that may be my love of space adventures talking. It’s
comes close, and I’m wondering if Marvel will ever mess up again. They can;
Captain America The First Avenger, Iron Man 3, and both Thor’s, are about it
though (down Marvel fan boys, back, back I say). Those are still enjoyable
movies, they just aren’t at the level of what Marvel has churned out recently. Ant-Man takes us on a great ride, and Paul Rudd hits a
home run as the title character. The movie works because Rudd is a believable
loveable loser. You want him to become the hero and save the day.

We
start out with Scott Lang, Paul Rudd, in prison getting ready to be released. He
is trying to go straight, but gets roped into helping Hank Pym, played by Michael Douglas. What
makes Ant-Man work is the comedy interlaced within the movie. Rudd has his handiwork
all over the script, and it shows. There are only a few jokes that don’t really work throughout the film. If Ant-Man tried to be serious I don’t think the movie would work. It’s
weird to think that a movie like this can exist in the same universe as the
Daredevil TV series. They both are great, and really work within the larger
framework.

The
technology in Ant-Man is great. Pym created the suit and the shrinking
technology. The bad guy, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), is
trying to reproduce the technology and sell to the highest bidder. It actually
has some decent pseudo-science behind the concept. It is at least somewhat believable.
You can definitely suspend your belief enough to think a man can shrink down to
ant-size and control millions of ants. The ants are something I did not expect.
They are my favorite part of the movie. I loved what Lang is able to do with
them, and they add to the overall powers of Ant-Man. Ant-Man truly isn’t as
strong without the ants to back him up. They play a big part in the movie
and help take down Yellowjacket (Darren Cross).

Where
the movie misses slightly is in the villain. I really like Corey Stoll as an
actor. I loved him in House of Cards, but his villain is just too over the top.
It was hard to believe someone as unstable as him running a corporation. I also
didn’t really buy the interaction between Cross and Pym. I couldn’t see them
every really liking each other. It was hard to think Pym would have every
trusted Cross. They try to explain this away, saying Cross has changed because
of the Pym-particles affecting his brain. Pym didn’t seem affected, they said
he was but didn’t go into how he was affected. However Pym was affected they
did a poor job of explaining the risks to Lang. Will Lang have to hang up the
suit because of some form of brain damage in several years? The other weird
dynamic is Hank and his daughter Hope, played by Evangeline Lilly.
I didn’t quite buy into the emotional issues between her and him. They just
seemed a little hokey (I really like that word). Lilly and Douglas are really
good in their roles, they just didn’t quite have the right chemistry together.

Douglas
and Lilly however both have great chemistry with Rudd. He plays off both of
them well, and all three of them together are great on the screen. Without a
doubt Rudd is the star of the movie, and he carries the load. You want him to
succeed and become the hero. The plot is well done, and special effects are
spectacular. I didn’t feel like I was watching a something fake when I saw
Ant-Man shrink down. There are some intense and funny scenes while he is
shrunk, and it is what makes the movie so enjoyable. It feels like Lang becomes
the Ant-Man quickly in the movie. It’s a good origin story and didn’t feel cliché.

I
had a great time viewing Ant-Man. It was funny, action packed, and has good
characters. You can’t go wrong with those three components in a movie. We now
have to wait a year for our next Marvel movie. We have a bunch of TV shows to
hold the fort until then. I’m looking forward to the next Netflix, show A.K.A
Jessica Jones, if it’s on the same level as Daredevil we are in for a treat. Go
see Ant-Man, it is well worth your time and moneyJ.